


In His Eyes, a Flaming Glow

by orphan_account



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 19:26:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was born James Bond and died James Bond, but everything else changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In His Eyes, a Flaming Glow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beeminionjeran](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeminionjeran/gifts).



> I'm not as familiar with the Bond fandom as I'd like to be, so apologies for mistakes. First fic for this fandom. You were warned.

He was born James Bond and died James Bond, but everything else changed.

 He was a devil of a child, the sort that always had sticky fingers and a never-quite-healed bruise on his cheek, and he was magnetic. Then, his parents had stopped being and he had hidden himself away. When he came out, his hands were never sticky again. In fact, he was quite good at not leaving a trace.

The Royal Navy had been... an experience. He had known how to use a gun, God bless Kincade, but he had never used one on a man before. It was shockingly horrible, then shockingly easy, then another part of life. But then, he had never been well-adjusted.

And that is why he was perfect for MI6. 

It wasn't that MI6 was a seamless fit, at least at first. He hated the structure, resented the control, and choked on the pride that he couldn't quite swallow down. But he saw the double-ohs, saw the respect they got and the cars they drove and he _wanted._ He wanted to be immortal and untouchable. He wanted to be Caesar and Alexander and absolutely shining. 

(The double-oh program, of course, was conducive to none of these things, but James was the sort to pick role models who died horribly. His misconceptions weren't terribly surprising.)

 And that, that was what he wanted most: to be one of the great double-ohs. Or at least, it was what he wanted most right up until he met 004.

 Tiago was a superstorm. Lightening had met a tornado and ravaged the earth in its path, his alabaster smile the only warning (and the only apology) he gave. James had never been stupid enough to fly a kite in a storm, but he had always loved watching the lightening. Tiago spoke, and lied, with his hands and smiled like he had an atom bomb hidden behind his teeth and couldn't wait to watch it blow. His hair flopped onto his forehead and his shoulders hunched but James could smell the danger coming off of him. There were legends, naturally: that he was M's son, that he could wipe out nations, that he was wanted in dozens of countries under hundreds of aliases. The thing was, when you looked at him, you thought they could be true. And James decided that maybe if he could have this double-oh, it would be better than actually being one.

Tiago's interest was an easy thing to gain and a hard thing to keep. So James, putting aside flirtatious tactics he used on blushing women and shiny-eyed men in bars, cornered him-- well, as much as you could cage something like Tiago-- in a hallway empty but for the two of them and told him, simply, that he had been watching him. He didn't say how he was fascinated with the buck of his shoulder when firing a gun, or how he admired his skill, because, as always, he still had his pride wrapped around him like a bitter quilt; however, Tiago was always too perceptive by half.

 ("My mother," he said once to James, who was fucked-out, near sleep, and mostly sure he hadn't asked a question, "she taught me when I was very young, to always see under things. To see the truth of them. You see, she had horrible taste in men. My father was the worst by far. It didn't save her, seeing the truth, but she always knew what lies she was choosing to accept." James merely yawned and replied, "Ah. So, your mother isn't actually M, then. The others will be so disappointed, most of them had money on that," and fell asleep to Tiago's quiet chuckle.)

 And that was how it began, with one man tight-lipped and arms crossed and the other's eyes lighting up in the delight of a child receiving a new toy.  Neither of them expected how it ended. Neither of them even expected the middle bit, which might be more important anyways.

 James was horribly prideful, Tiago was terribly clever, both were possessive, neither was kind. It shouldn't have been the surprise that it was that each was unable to let the other go. Tiago took to dropping off mission write-ups, then going straight to find James before dragging him off to a corner, prying his legs apart, undoing his shirt and then unraveling him as completely as he could. When he received a notice for his rent, he simply packed up his boxes and moved the things he cared to keep to James' flat. James, being James, huffed at him, but threw away housing adverts in the paper every morning before Tiago could see them. They were told to belong to nothing but queen and country, but they both had England and her Majesty ingrained so deeply in themselves that belonging to each other never seemed treasonous. James never told Tiago how his parents died, and Tiago wouldn't tell James about the scar on his shoulder but they both knew each other's names, their real names or at very least the ones written on their birth certificates--

 "Rodriguez," Tiago one day, over coffee, told James, who shook with mirth because of course his real name sounded more like a false identity than most of his aliases did--

 and James learned how to fire a .38 revolver as well as a Walther PPK and they were so far from perfect and so absolutely wonderful.

 And then M cast the prodigal son from the promised land, and James burned. It was supposed to take less than a year, perhaps seven months, and Tiago left the flat early one morning, urging James to stay faithful to him, a joke which neither took in jest.

 Six months later, James was left nothing to be faithful to but clothes that wouldn't be worn, a bottle of cologne, and memories he had taken for granted and taken no care to preserve.

 If Hong Kong killed Tiago Rodriguez, it created James Bond.

 He mourned the way he did most things- wholly and destructively. He wept, in private, and smashed a glass bottle of bourbon that had been untouched yesterday. He raged and he railed, and he got nothing for it. Eventually, he buttoned up his Tom Ford jacket, straightened his cuffs, and reported for duty.

 He fucked a woman in her summer cottage, then arrested her husband who had released NATO information to terrorist agencies. He jumped out of and onto cars, drank himself into stupors, and took home the first person who looked legal and interested. He smashed one man's head through a sink and shot another and took the title of a woman who died in a car bombing in Morocco. He had gotten his first wish, lost his second, and was still waiting for the third that would set everything right again. His wishful necromancy did no more for Tiago than it had for his parents.

 It all came to a head with a woman who had eyes like forget-me-nots and died for the man she loved more than him.

 It wasn't that he loved her-- or, no. He didn't love her the way he loved Tiago, because to love another person like that? It would tear him in two. No one could bear to love like that more than once. But he had fancied the idea of being whole again, the way he hadn’t been for years, and therefore fancied her as the key part in the process. He had loved her for what she made him, and what he could pretend he was around her because he was still so, so goddamn _stupid_ and Tiago would have-

Well. It hardly mattered now.

 So, instead of looking for something else to fix himself with, James wrapped his jagged edges around his shoulders like armor. Pallas Bond, perhaps. He used the fragments of who he was and who he is and who he might be to form a complete man, if ever there were such a thing. He got his revenge, and he did his job, and he was the best because he had to be, because if he wasn’t then he had lost everything for nothing. He moved with a terrible velocity, never slowing down to see what he was missing, right up until he fell from the sky, ended up tied to a chair, and let out a sob because he’d know those eyes _anywhere_.

 “What,” James asked, shakier than he’d like to admit, his armor loosening at the seams,“have you done to your poor hair?”

 And Raoul Silva flashed James Tiago’s grin and cut his binds, waiting for the agent to follow him, saying, “Well, you see, I was waiting an awfully long time for an old friend of mine to join me. I’ve quite a mind to take him with me, you see; Mummy’s been rather naughty, can’t be trusted with other people’s things.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pallas Athena- it was a protective mantle that the goddess Athena wore into battle.
> 
> I can't tell if I love this piece or want to kill it with fire.
> 
> The title comes form Boney M's "Rasputin," partly because Tiago is a man that cannot be killed and partly because he would love that song and you know it.


End file.
